The sublime is a state at the border of order and chaos, where pain and pleasure become indistinguishable, where you stand at the threshold of death and feel it in your bones. The Greek word sublimus literally means "up to the threshold" or "up to the lintel" — at the door.
Greene's specific formulation (from JBP Ep 237, 2021):
"The ultimate in sublime is… being a human being and being socialized is a kind of a world, there's a limit, a circle that we have to live inside, certain codes and conventions that we have to abide by. And what humans are attracted to is what lies beyond that limit. It's just part of our nature."
The sublime is the experience of what lies beyond the social circle. It's not virtue; it's the encounter with the limit of your own mortality, mediated by a spectacle, a piece of music, an initiation, or a brush with death.
The two emotions (Greene's specific move)
Greene's move is the union of two opposing emotions at the same time — pain and pleasure, fear and awe, terror and joy. This is more specific than Kant's "supersensible" or Burke's "delightful horror." The Greek orgasmos is la petite mort (the little death) — the orgasm is sublime because it almost kills you, and the almost-dying is what makes the pleasure meaningful.
"When you have that — it's like the ultimate — it's a mix of you know they call in French the orgasm the petit mort… an orgasm is almost like a little death. So that sense of it's almost too much… like something so pleasurable can actually kind of morph into something a little bit frightening."
Why the sublime matters as a posture framework
Modern culture has no civic mechanism for delivering the sublime. Peterson's argument (which Greene agrees with): the craving for the sublime is the deepest need human beings have, and nothing in modern culture satisfies it. The substitutes:
Raves, concerts, ayahuasca tourism — the contemporary delivery system
Mass spectator experiences (the Pope in Nicaragua 1984; Nuremberg 1934) — both deliver the sublime, but only one is healthy
Aggressive rap music (50 Cent, hip-hop) — surrogate for what the old initiation rituals delivered to young men
Replaced by screens — the opposite of the sublime; banal, programmed, sleepwalking
The posture implication: if you don't design your life to include the sublime, you will get its pathological forms anyway. The 21-year-old affair, the incel ideology, the suicide, the school shooter — these are failed sublime experiences. The boy who "identified his ambition with the patriarchal force that's devouring the environment" and killed himself (Peterson's friend) is the same person who would have been an initiate 1000 years ago.
The arc of Greene's books is the arc of the sublime
48 Laws of Power (1998) — study of manipulation (standing at the threshold of the psychopath's worldview)
33 Strategies of War (2007) — study of conflict (the threshold of violence)
The 50th Law (2009) — study of fearlessness (50 Cent standing at the threshold of death and choosing calm)
Mastery (2012) — study of apprenticeship (the long approach to the threshold)
Laws of Human Nature (2018) — study of the dark side (the threshold within yourself)
The Sublime (forthcoming) — the encounter itself
Each book moves closer to the sublime. The destination isn't a self-help conclusion; it's a religious experience — the union of fear and awe that the ancient mysteries (Eleusis) were about.
How to apply (posture-level)
Find the encounters in your life that put you at the threshold of death or dissolution. Music that overwhelms you. A view that makes you feel small. A conversation that changes how you see the world. A book that makes you feel like a different person on the other side.
Distinguish sublime from spectacle. Sublime is a state at the threshold of dissolution; spectacle is a display that delivers adrenaline but no transformation. Sublime changes you; spectacle just entertains.
Beware the counterfeit sublime. Mass politics, extremism, porn, the cult leader — all deliver a fake sublime that ends in destruction, not transformation. The discriminator: does the experience integrate with your prior self, or does it replace it? Sublime integrates; counterfeit sublime replaces.
Ancient initiation as a model. The Eleusinian Mysteries made the initiate experience death in life — the Demeter/Persephone story. The point wasn't to "graduate" from the dark side; it was to come out the other side transformed. Modern equivalents: meditation retreats, vision quests, ayahuasca ceremonies, deep wilderness trips, long solo travel.